


got a pocket for every reason

by Restful_Insomniac



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Animal Shelter AU, Anxiety, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, ludicrous amounts of kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 19:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15079610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Restful_Insomniac/pseuds/Restful_Insomniac
Summary: In which Adam is a good bro who knows what's best for his best friend—which is how Justin ends up volunteering at an animal shelter, surrounded by cute animals, litter boxes, and a guy with a shy grin and kittens in his pockets.alternate title: Justin is a cat-astrophe but so is Kent so it's okay





	got a pocket for every reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leetlebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leetlebird/gifts).



> See end note for content warnings!
> 
> Many thanks to my beta who swooped in right when I needed them the most.

“Bro, you know I love you right?”

A nod.

“And that I wouldn’t just interfere in your life for no reason right?”

Another nod.

“Cuz that’s not bros. And we’re bros.”

Nod.

“I have something for you, bro, and I think you should take a look.”

Justin finally manages to find his voice after a few raspy false starts. “Slide it under the table.” 

Holster must do so, because there’s suddenly a paper on the floor. With the fetal position Justin’s found himself in, the paper is located close to his right side (external oblique), having somehow made it to the center of his curled mass. 

He puts in a good-faith effort to read it, but it’s no use. The angle he’s trying to read it from is strange, with his temple (temporal bone) parallel to the ground and on the wrong side of the paper, and the letters are swimming all around the paper anyways. He’s mostly learned to deal with his dyslexia, but the font is all wrong and he’s too tired to really care.

“What does it say?” He rasps out, after a moment of staring at the paper with no intention of interpreting it.

“Huh?”

“What is it?” He manages to say, louder this time. His throat hurts, Justin realizes, and he wonders idly if it’s from dehydration or the screaming breakdown he’d had in the shower that morning.

“An application to be a volunteer at an animal shelter,” Holster reveals.

“What?” Justin shouts, and then regrets it, clutching a hand to his throat. Dehydration, almost definitely.

“Rans, you need stress relief and they’ve got puppies and kittens. Plus, you’ll feel like you’re doing a good thing because it is a good thing—they need volunteers, you need contact with small furry animals, it’s a win-win.”

“I don’t need stress relief,” argues Justin, projecting his voice so he’ll be heard from underneath the kitchen table.

There’s a scraping sound, Justin assumes that Holster is pulling up a chair. 

Damn. That means he’s serious.

“Justin Oluransi, I need you to look at your life. Look at your choices.”

Justin looks ahead, but there’s not much to see. A dust bunny in the corner of the kitchen, sure. And some crumbs. He should sweep at some point.

“Uh…”

“Where are you right now, Justin?”

“Our apartment?” He croaks out.

Holster makes the sound of a buzzer, “Wrong! Try again.” 

“Boston?” 

Buzzer noise.

“Under our kitchen table.”

“Ding! Correct! And why are you under our kitchen table?” A thud sound. Adam must have slammed a pointed finger down onto the table—he has been watching a lot of crime dramas, lately.

“This isn’t funny, Holtzy.”

“No, it’s not, because you curling up under the table whenever you get too stressed from medical school isn’t funny.”

Justin doesn’t know how to answer that, so he doesn’t. 

“You should fill out the application, bro.”

There’s a second in which Justin considers just not reacting, tiring Adam out so that he gives up and leaves Justin to his stress in the somewhat-dusty area below the table. It wouldn’t be too hard, he reasons, using the quick deliberation that comes out sometimes during exams and the MCAT and all the obstacles in his way. It’s the same lightning-fast thinking that slows down time in the middle of a penalty kill when it’s him and the player with the puck and a minuscule amount of ice in between them, when he can see the individual sweat droplets on the other player’s face and can idly predict where they’ll fly once he slams them into the boards. 

Time slows down, Justin considers stalling to drive Adam off and then sticks his hand out from under the table in Adam’s direction.

Adam presses a pen to his fingers, and Justin props himself up on his elbow to start filling out the volunteer application.

\-----------

His first day at the shelter is a shit-show.

Literally.

“So, uh, you kind of have to just get used to all this,” the volunteer with the curly hair and bright smile says as she shovels up more feces from the litter box into a bag. “It’s easier with the cats since they have the boxes but taking the dogs out to walk can get pretty rough sometimes!”

"It's not so bad," she continues on, gesturing to the bag. "See? It's all pretty self-contained." 

Justin's nodding along frantically, eager to show her that yes, he has been listening and yes, he is capable of scooping up cat litter. He is a capable person, he wants to tell her, he is a capable person that is willing to go through the cat litter for the joys of actually getting to hang out with the cats. 

"And anyways, it's worth it.” She gestures to the window that takes up a good portion of the door. There's a man standing there, with his back to the door. All that's notable about him are the kittens he has perched all over him—one on each shoulder and a third on top of the snapback that's jammed onto his head. 

The guy turns and Justin realizes that he's not just a guy but a stupidly gorgeous man with kittens all over him and—oh no, this was a bad idea, wasn't it.

He's stupidly fucking gorgeous and he's leaning to the side to nuzzle the head of one of the kittens that's sitting on his shoulder and Justin wants to die.

"That'll be you! Just once you get past the cleaning litter part," the girl says with a cheerful smile.

Justin grabs the pan-handling device of the litter scooper and begins shoveling through the litter with a ferocity he didn't know he had. The kittens are cute, sure, but all he can see in his mind's eye is the image of the man's face, fond smile that was directed at the kitten aimed at him instead. He shovels faster.

"Kent!" The girl, Serena, calls out as they exit the room, having finished cleaning the litter boxes in 'record time' (according to Serena). "Let me introduce you to our new volunteer!"

The stupidly fucking gorgeous man turns with a small smile. The kittens are off of him, but Justin realizes he can see a small head poking out of the man's sweatshirt pocket. He wants to cry. The man extends a hand and Justin manages to take it without doing anything embarrassing, like trying to tuck this guy under his arm and attempt to keep him there forever. "I'm Kent.”

"Justin," he says, only just managing to not introduce himself as 'Ransom.' Hockey habits die hard, but he’s trying to be cool, calm, and competent, damn it.

"Kent runs the shelter," Serena explains.

Justin tries not to look too surprised. Kent looks like he’s 25, and if everyone reacts like Justin wants to, then Kent is probably sick of seeing surprise, since it could be kind of insulting. He attempts to school his expression into something that’s mildly impressed but also somewhat calm, as though he too is doing great things and is very young to be doing them and is happy to meet a kindred spirit.

A small flush rises to Kent's cheeks and he shrugs a little. "'Runs' is a really big word," he says and avoids eye contact.

Justin tries not to be charmed.

(He fails.)

A small 'mew' comes from the vicinity of Kent's pocket and Justin does himself the courtesy of ignoring how Kent's hand immediately goes to his pocket to pet and quiet the kitten contained therein. 

"Anyways, I'll probably always be around when you are," Kent says, brown eyes darting around and then finally settling on a point somewhere behind Justin. "So if you have any logistical questions or really any questions at all you can always just shoot me an email." 

"Yeah, sounds good man," Justin manages on autopilot. 

Kent leaves with a flickered smile and Justin watches him go.

"Kent's our fearless leader around these parts," Serena mentions as they walk over to get the dogs so they can take them on a walk, giving them a chance to exercise and relieve themselves. She starts picking out leashes while Justin jams his hands into his pockets and wishes he could be helpful. "He does a really great job but there's only so much one person can do for all these animals, y'know?"

Justin looks around at the house that calls itself a shelter, eyeing the scratched up walls, the fur-covered furniture, and all the various kennels and rooms that the animals are put into, and tries to imagine being responsible for all the animals contained within. "Yeah, I know."

The dogs aren't all willing to go along with Justin as he leads them on a walk, some eyeing him distrustfully and staring up at Serena with a 'this guy, really?' expression, but they're more or less amenable to going outside at the very least, and if Justin's the one who's going to lead them there, they'll begrudgingly go. 

"You're a big guy," Serena says, and hands him three leashes. "You can take care of the bigger guys."

Justin looks down at the leashes and at the three large dogs at the ends of them. He's not good at telling dog breeds apart from one another, but he’s fairly positive that two of them are some kind of German Shepherd mixes, and the remaining one seems to be some weird amalgamation of a lab and something strangely spotted. All three dogs look like they have room to grow but also more than enough mass on them to make him go flying, if they so choose.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” He asks, but the dogs are already pulling him forth and so he goes.

The shit-show that the dogs put on is, admittedly, worse than cleaning up after the cats, but the dog park down the road has bins where they can dispose of the matter immediately and it’s not like Justin really cares all that much about the fecal matter of animals when he’ll have to deal with human fecal matter next year during his rotations. He’s heard so many horror stories that if anything, this volunteer gig will help acclimate him. 

He tells himself that while sending the lab-mix a pained look. “What the hell did you eat, dude?” The dog barks at him and then runs off with its pals.

“So what brings you to the shelter?” Serena asks as she plops down next to him on the bench, some kind of terrier in her arms. The dog pants happily in the fresh air, seemingly content to just be outside. “Volunteer hours, love of animals, or…”

“My roommate thought that it’d help me calm down if I could spend some time around animals,” Justin confesses, and it doesn’t sound so preposterous out loud. “And I’m in med school, so it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to learn how to take care of animals before I’m taking care of people.”

Serena offers him a fist bump. “That’s admirable, dude, really.”

Sitting in the sunshine, watching dogs run around and knowing that he’d successfully taken care of them, Justin feels worlds away from the cool and dusty floor under the kitchen table. 

Fuck.

Adam was right.

\-----------

Justin can’t spend all his time at the shelter, much to his chagrin. Medical school rests for no bro and the classes he’s taking seem single-mindedly determined to ruin his life. To his surprise, however, and to Adam’s great satisfaction, the worst shaking of his fingers is ebbed by the knowledge that in a few days he’ll be able to press them into the fur of a pit bull or kitten or whatever other animal noses its way into his lap. 

And the animals are really cute.

He’s becoming more independent at the shelter as a volunteer, learning slowly where everything is placed and no longer freaking out when something goes wrong and he doesn’t know where to find the supplies to clean it up. It’s easy to just ask Kent or another volunteer, and then it gets to the point where he doesn’t even need to ask anyone anymore.

Peach’s favorite rag to sleep on is in the corner of the playroom, the only ball that Bruce will fetch is on the third shelf in the kennel, and Iggy has taken to leaving her catnip-stuffed mouse under Jasmine’s dog bed, which only becomes an issue if Jasmine’s sleeping when Iggy wants to play.

The longer he volunteers at the shelter, the more he realizes just how much Kent does there.

It’s not just that Kent looks after the animals (though he does) or looks unfairly attractive while carrying around kittens in his pockets (though he does), or even that Kent is extremely gentle and quiet when speaking with young children whose indulgent parents are getting them a pet (though he _is_ ). Kent is just always around, always hustling, cleaning out litter, feeding dogs, cleaning up a mess, doing paperwork…

Justin begins to wonder just when Kent sleeps, and if it’s overstepping his authority to force him to take a nap once in a while.

One day, he walks in, and Kent’s looking worse than usual. He’s still attractive—Kent Parson is always ridiculously attractive—but his enigmatic eyes are accompanied by dark bags, and his grin is just on the wrong side of manic, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. His shirt is on inside-out.

“Uh, don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Justin begins as he’s signing in on the roster at the front desk, “But have you been sleeping okay?”

“Of course,” Kent says, and the manic grin gets wider and more awful. “But I don’t have time to worry about that now, I’ve got to finish up a financial report for the board… Would you mind watching the desk?” 

“Financial report? Shouldn’t an accountant handle that?” Justin realizes he’s raised his hands as if to calm down an angry animal and lowers them immediately.

Kent looks confused, and the angle of his eyebrows just worsens the look of the bags under his eyes. “I am the accountant.” 

“When do you _sleep_?” Justin winces once the words fly out of his mouth. “Sorry, didn’t mean it like that.”

Kent barks out a laugh. “I’ll sleep when the financial report is done. I’ll, uh, see you on the flip side, dude.” He salutes with two fingers and enters the back office, the tag of his shirt sticking out. 

Justin watches him go with concern. 

It’s an hour later, as Justin’s filling out some paperwork for a family adopting a small Chihuahua, that he stops, his pen frozen in the air. 

“Oh, fuck,” he says out loud, and then looks around to make sure no one heard. Thankfully, everyone’s distracted by the bouncing Chihuahua, who’s made it his mission to lick the faces of every member of his new family. 

“Fuck,” he says again under his breath, and reflects on the dark bags under Kent’s eyes. “This is what Holster feels like all the time.” He glances back at the office, through the window in the door he can see Kent’s blond head bent low and intense in front of the desktop screen. 

“Fuck,” he repeats, and then goes back to filling out the paperwork. 

Hardly ten minutes later, the door to the shelter slams open, prompting the scattering noises of several animals. An irate dark-haired man storms in. “Where is he?” he demands, and Justin’s out from behind the desk in an instant.

“Sir, I need you to calm down,” he says, and tries to use every inch of his large former-hockey-player frame to intimidate the guy. 

The guy takes a deep breath, but the exhale is almost violent. “Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry. “Do you know where Kent is?”

Justin’s eyebrows fly up, and in his surprise, his intimidating posture relaxes a little. “Uh, why?”

The angry man rolls his eyes and the tension seeps out of his frame a little as well. “The idiot hasn’t slept in days and he won’t unless someone makes him.”

“And you’re going to make him?” Justin eyes the man critically. He’s attractive enough, but something about the idea of Kent having a boyfriend doesn’t sit right with Justin (it’s the idea of Kent having a boyfriend who isn’t Justin, but he doesn’t have to acknowledge that when he’s not drunk, he decides on the spot). 

“I’ve been his best friend for about six years, and all that time has been spent trying to make the idiot take care of himself.”

Oh, Justin understands. This is Kent’s Adam.

“He’s back in the office,” Justin points. “Please make him get some sleep.” 

The guy nods definitively and makes a beeline for the office. The door opens, and Kent’s voice filters out.

“Swoops? What—hey!”

There’s the sound of a brief scuffle.

The door slams all the way open and the man appears again, this time with Kent slung over his shoulder. The guy (Swoops?) nods in a friendly way at Justin and starts to walk out. All the while, Kent is kicking and writhing from his place on the guy’s shoulder.

“Jeff! Put me down! Jeff! You asshole!”

It’s no use. The guy—Jeff, Swoops, whoever he is—carries Kent out of the building and Justin is left standing at the front counter with many loads of dirty litter-boxes waiting for him and no excuses to focus on something else. 

\-----------

Things change a little after that. Kent slinks back to the shelter the next day looking a little more well-rested, and immediately begins to spout off apologies for his friend who’s “a fucking caveman” and “wouldn’t know manners if they bit him in the ass.” 

Justin laughs off the apologies and merely admits that he has a friend like that too. 

Kent smiles sheepishly and immediately sneaks off to go play with the kittens instead of doing paperwork. Normally Justin would watch him do so out of the corner of his eye and marvel at Kent’s beauty and grace and untouchability, but today he watches him, amused, and just remembers the way Kent kicked and squirmed as he was carried off to sleep. Until the day before, Kent was untouchable, like a marble statue in a museum there to be marveled at, but never touched, hidden behind a permanent smile and cool inscrutable eyes. Justin had to merely watch and marvel, gazing up in awe from behind a velvet partition. All that was ruined in Kent’s flail of indignant limbs, and so now Justin watches him, not like a marble statue in a museum, but like Kent Parson, Animal Lover Extraordinaire, who doesn’t even flinch when the mother cat uses her claws to climbs up his back while he’s trying to entertain her kittens. 

Once the illusion of the untouchable man has been shattered, Justin begins to notice more about Kent than just how attractive he is. He sees the way Kent plays with the energetic cats, or pretends not to notice the rescue dogs who’d been abused as they creep up behind him, or gently cleans up some of the older animals who have trouble controlling their bowels. He notices how Kent will make a corny joke and, if no one laughs, will flinch and retreat into himself. Justin makes it a point to laugh at his comments and, occasionally, bump shoulders with him, as if to offer congratulations on a pun.

“I’m going barking mad,” Kent says one day, halfway through a pile of paperwork. It earns a half-laugh and an eye-roll.

“This is a cat-astrophe,” Kent observes in response to a litter box mess. Justin shoves his shoulder a little, but laughs.

“This is a once in a lifetime meowment,” Kent argues, in favor of dressing up the animals for Halloween (he gets his way and preens at ‘The Little Mewmaid,” a mer-cat costume which, admittedly, does fairly well for itself on Instagram). Justin follows the shelter Instagram account as a reward, but also takes a moment to congratulate Kent for the idea.

“I’m sick and tired of your cat-titude,” Justin overhears him mumbling at a cat who’s wedged himself under a cabinet and won’t come out. Justin actually giggles at that one, though it’s cut off when he gets a good look at Kent, on all fours, earnestly leaning forward to try and get the cat out. Kent’s wearing skinny jeans—Justin has to run away.

“You’re meow-nificent,” Kent tells Justin, as he’s walking around with a cat on his shoulders and another one in his arms. Kent walks away before he can see how much Justin’s flushing.

“Just gotta stay paw-sitive!” Kent declares, high fiving a well-trained dog. Justin doesn’t bother to hide his grin at that one.

“Looks like he’s ready fur a nap,” Kent giggles at a Labrador, snoozing into its food bowl. Justin can do nothing but agree and help Kent take a photo for the shelter’s Instagram.

\-----------

One night, a day or two after actually laughing genuinely at one of Kent’s atrocious puns, he enters his and Holster’s apartment with a spring in his step and some lemon bars he's picked up on his way home. After throwing down his bag, he approaches Holster, who’s sitting on the couch, and holds out his hand for a fist-bump. “The shelter was a great idea, bro, thanks.”

Holster ignores the outstretched fist and tugs him down onto the couch for a hug. “Glad to hear it bro." 

"I got you lemon bars from that bakery you like, as a thank you."

"Bro," Holster says seriously, making direct eye contact. "Your happiness is the only thank you I need. Now you wanna watch Golden Girls with me?” 

“Sure, but you’ve gotta quiz me on flashcards in between episodes.”

“Deal,” Holtzy says. Justin’s almost not anxious at all about the large amount of vocab he needs to memorize before Friday. Still anxious, but it’s a definite improvement. He sinks into the cushions of the couch and lets the ladies of the Golden Girls distract him from the perils of med school, volunteering at animal shelters, and Kent’s radiant grin.

\-----------

And then, a week later, he’s here.

Justin stares down at the kitten in his lap, sleeping peacefully, trustfully. Her small chest rises and falls, and Justin finds himself pressing two fingers to her ribs to keep an eye on her breathing, to make sure it continues. The motion, which was supposed to make him feel better just makes him feel vaguely nauseous, as the images of the previous day filter through his mind, accompanied by the various terms on his stacks of flashcards.

Gallbladder, bile duct, ileum, secum, haustra… 

Bile rises in his throat and he fights not to gag. The kitten sleeping in his lap is moved slightly by the force of his contracting abdomen, making him wonder if he should move the cat off his lap so he can move nearer to the trash can. The planning of his eventual sickness actually makes the nausea subside and he tries and fails not to be overly relieved by it.

Because the kitten is still in his lap, his hands still pressed to her fur, and she's still sleeping, warm and soft against his skin—not wet and slick and cold. His hands against her fur look monstrous, and he hates thinking of their crime in such close proximity to her. How can she still trust him? Can't she sense it? 

"Hey Justin, have you seen Peach's rag? I can't find it in the usual spot," Kent's voice gets louder as he approaches.

Justin fights the choking in his throat, but can't seem to get any words out.

"Ah, I see you're occupied," Kent says, and his voice is warm as he approaches Justin from behind. "No prob, dude, I'll just keep looking."

And then, "Whoah, is everything okay?"

On cue, Justin bursts into tears.

"Oh god, oh god," Kent's hands flutter all around Justin's shoulders before Kent unceremoniously drops down next to him on the floor and slings an arm around his shoulders. "There there, it's okay, or uh—it's going to be okay?" 

The kitten in his lap stirs. 

Justin cries harder.

Kent's hands clamp down a little more firmly on his shoulders now, like he's made up his mind or crossed some line and there's no going back. Justin registers all this in some part of his brain that isn't occupied with the small, soft, warm, and trusting kitten that is staring up at him curiously. There's not enough oxygen in the world for air to enter his lungs, and he hates knowing the intricacies of the gas exchange process in his lungs, hates the clinical knowledge that is starting to suck away at his humanity, leaving him cold and steel-like and smelling of ethanol. Until there's nothing left of him but the shine of fluorescent lights on chrome tables.

"Hey, dude, can you breathe with me?"

Kent's voice is somewhere beyond the fog, and Justin registers it but can't seem to focus on it. Then, one of his hands is removed from the kitten and being pressed against a different set of ribs, these rising and falling at a slower pace. Up, down... Up, down... One breath in and one breath out. Justin realizes his role in this exercise and starts trying to focus enough on the breathing that he'll be able to copy the pace. His own lungs struggle to obey, but after a long few minutes, he's breathing normally, the room has regained its color, and he has a kitten on his lap that he doesn't deserve and a man by his side who he wishes would leave, but hopes more that he’ll stay.

"I'm sorry," Justin finally manages to say, a few minutes after regaining his breath.

"There's literally nothing to be sorry about," Kent responds, which has to be a lie but Justin can see why Kent would be uncomfortable saying otherwise. 

Justin sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. He hopes Kent doesn’t notice it.

A minute goes by, the kitten settles back down in Justin's lap, and neither of them says anything.

“Can I ask what that was about? Are you okay?”

Justin does a half-shrug with one shoulder. “I’m fine.”

“You uh, didn’t really look it a second ago.”

The words come spilling out before Justin can stop them. “We had to do a dissection yesterday. In one of my classes. Cats.” 

Kent’s hand freezes on his shoulder, and that’s when Justin realizes that it’d been rubbing his upper arm gently up till that point.

He waits for Kent to retract his arm completely in disgust, but even after a long moment of waiting, it doesn’t happen. He forces a deep breath into his lungs and keeps speaking. “They were from a vet clinic near here, and were all ‘euthanized humanely and to keep them from greater pain and suffering,’” he chokes out, the quoted words bitter on his tongue. “I know that. But. Bro, it was so hard to do. But I thought it was over and I got through it and then I came in today to cheer myself up and—.“ His voice cuts off because there’s a sudden lump in his throat. He waves helplessly at the kitten in his lap, the other hand still pressed against her side.

“And?” Kent prods, gently. His voice is soft, and Justin wants to wrap himself in it like a blanket on a drizzly winter afternoon.

“And now I know what her liver looks like,” he manages to say. “And all of her intestines too.” Tears well up in his eyes, but he blinks them away.

The hand on his shoulder resumes its rubbing and Justin can’t fight off the tears anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Kent says, “That sounds horrible. I’m sorry you’re going through that.”

A sob comes out.

“But you’re in medical school, and you’re learning how to be a doctor, and so you need to know things like anatomy and stuff, right?”

Justin nods through his tears.

“And you can’t use human uh… cadavers? They’re called cadavers, right?”

Justin snorts out some kind of laugh but nods his head anyways. 

“But those have gotta be harder to come by than cats, right?”

Another nod.

Kent’s hand on his shoulder begins to move in a different pattern, but it’s still soothing. “So it’s no wonder that they might have you start out with cats. And it’s not bad, those cats were already gone, you just used their deaths to educate yourself. And you’re gonna use that knowledge to be a doctor and save people.”

Oh god, Justin’s bottom lip is trembling. He manages to refrain from crying further, but, on some strange instinct, moves to bury his face in Kent’s shoulder. Kent smells good, and the feeling of fabric on his face is soothing. 

Kent’s hand stutters in its motion, but then Kent’s wrapping his arms around him and Justin sinks into the hug. There’s an indignant squeal from the kitten in his lap as she adjusts to the new position, which makes both Justin and Kent laugh a little, but the laughter quiets down and then there’s just the sound of their soft breathing as they hold one another. 

“You’re gonna do great things, Justin,” Kent whispers, some time later. It’s been long enough that the position is growing somewhat uncomfortable, but Justin doesn’t want to let go. “And you aren’t hurting anyone getting there. You shouldn’t feel guilty about anything—all the animals here love you, and so does everyone else.”

Fuck, Justin thinks, enveloped in warmth with cramps in his limbs. 

Kent’s arms around him feel like some mix of comfort and taunt. 

(Here is what you want, here is what you can’t have.)

Fuck.

\-----------

“Anyone in here?” Kent’s voice drifts into the room, startling Justin away from his reading. 

“In here!” He calls, and then, “Sorry!”

And then Kent’s in the doorway, leaning against it casually, and staring at Justin with an inscrutable expression. “What’cha doing in here?”

Justin gestures feebly at Ralph, a pit bull sleeping with his head in Justin’s lap. “Being a pillow,” he responds. It’s somewhat true. He’d been on his way home from the shelter, closing everything up and locking everything down, with his immunology textbook weighing heavily in his backpack. And then, his eyes had locked with Ralph’s. Ralph had wagged his tail once, twice, and then by the third time Justin had sat down on the floor of the kennel and made himself available for cuddles. 

He isn’t totally irresponsible though, his textbook is open on his lap and he’s actually finding it easier to make his way through reading about the innate immune system while he’s able to run his fingers along Ralph’s ears as he does so.

“Are you studying?” Kent asks, still from the doorway. Justin notices that his voice is a little off, and wonders if he needs a hot cup of tea or something. He then gets sidetracked with a thought of spending cold winter nights cuddling and keeping him warm, but then manages to bring himself back around.

“Uh, yeah. I’ve got an exam next week and Ralph’s keeping me company,” he fondly ruffles the dog’s fur on his head. Ralph snuffles in his sleep but doesn’t wake.

“I can see that,” Kent says. When Justin looks up at him, he turns his face away and stares down at something on the floor, though Justin can’t really see anything special about it.

"Is this okay?" Justin asks, hesitantly. "I just was closing up, but I didn't see any harm..."

"No, no! It's fine! I'll uh, leave you to it."

It's only then that Justin begins to wonder what Kent is doing at the shelter in the evening. He voices this question, and watches Kent's face flush.

"I was gonna hang around with the kittens," Kent admits. "My cat's on loan to Swoops to take care of his mouse problem and I didn't want to sit at home all alone." 

Now is not the time for Justin to volunteer his services as company, but he twitches with the urge to do so. "Is your cat that good at catching mice?"

Kent's face lights up. "She's the best at it! It's kind of gruesome, but she's so cute."

Before Justin knows what's happening, his textbook is off to the side, he's got Ralph snoozing to his left and Kent sitting to his right, flicking through the photos on his phone, which seem to be 95% photos of Kit Purrson, and 5% photos of various animals at the shelter. 

"I'm surprised you don't have more photos of the animals at the shelter," Justin says after a few moments. 

Kent shrugs one of his shoulders. "Can't get too attached. Hurts more when they get adopted."

It breaks Justin's heart a little bit, thinking of Kent waving goodbye to an animal he'd bonded with, and then purposefully keeping himself at arm's distance to spare himself the trouble. Stuffing kittens into his pockets to fill the void in his heart.

"Anyways," Kent continues, "This is Kit in her Halloween costume from last year..."

Justin settles in and allows himself to relish the warmth pressing in from Kent's side. His immunology textbook sits, discarded, at his side. Toll-like receptors can wait for now—he's got more important things to focus on.

\-----------

A few days later, Justin shows up to what looks like an intensely uncomfortable situation. Kent is standing at the counter, arms crossed, glaring down a broad and surly man, who looks like he could break Kent in half with a twitch of his hand. From the man's hand, an empty red leash dangles, and the man's face is quickly turning to be close to the same shade of red as the fabric. Both the man and Kent are whispering harshly, bent over a stack of white papers.

The volunteers are all huddled near the entrance, and Justin joins them to figure out just what is going on. 

"The guy wants to adopt Ralph," Serena tells him in a hushed tone, as though it's some kind of scandalous statement.

Justin waits to feel scandalized by the words but fails. Looking around at the swarm of angry faces, he's positive that he's missed something. "I don't get it. Isn't that a good thing?"

"It looks like Kent thinks the guy wants to make Ralph fight," Fred butts in, eyebrows furrowed and an angry flush high on his cheeks. "He was asking all sorts of weird questions about how vicious Ralph was and if he got along with other dogs and stuff. Said he heard pit bulls could be bloodthirsty." 

Suddenly, Kent's livid expression makes more sense. 

“I’m not giving you the dog,” Kent exclaims, loud enough to be heard from the entrance. “I don’t know why you haven’t left yet.”

“It's a _dog_. How much do you fucking want for it?”

“This isn’t a store, it’s a shelter,” Kent spits out. “And I’m not giving you a dog for any amount of money, so fuck off.”

“You’re gonna regret this,” the guy says, like some kind of mob villain from a movie. 

“Fuck the fuck off, dude.” 

The man turns and storms out, shoving past the group of volunteers on his way out, ignoring all of them glaring at him and Sarah making a vulgar gesture with her arms. The door slams shut behind him, and the tension in the room releases to the point that Justin remembers how to breathe

Kent grabs the papers on the counter and begins to tear them, one by one, with violent and sudden burst of movement. Once all the papers are torn, he slams a single fist down on the counter. “Fuck!” 

It's the magic word to release the invisible strings that had held the group of onlookers together. The volunteers scatter, except for Justin, who finds himself approaching the front desk.

“You okay dude?” 

Kent offers a half smile, sheepish in the way that only someone who has just had a somewhat public outburst can be sheepish. There’s a wry quirk to the corner of his mouth that Justin wants to smooth out with his thumb. “Sorry you had to see that, that guy was a huge asshole.”

Justin nods, but Kent continues talking. “I just get really heated whenever I hear about any kind of thing like that. Ralph’s such a sweetheart and that fucktruck would just torture him for… for shits and giggles?” Kent shakes his head and glares down at the table. “Still shouldn’t have been that public about it. Sorry.”

He’s so beautiful.

“Go on a date with me.”

It takes a second or two for Justin to realize that he was the one who said the words. 

Kent’s gaping at him, his mouth open and eyes (they seem to be grey today, Justin notes) wide. “What?” 

“Go on a date with me,” Justin repeats, and starts to grin a little, feeling ridiculously good with the aftertaste of the phrase on his tongue. “Please?”

“Yeah,” Kent agrees, and then a grin breaks out on his face, as beautiful and startling as the sun bursting out from behind the clouds. “Yeah,” he repeats, the grin spreading and making his eyes crinkle a little bit. “I’ll go on a date with you.”

“You will? Great!” Justin is beaming back at him and Kent’s beaming back and the only thing that could possibly ruin the moment would be a kitten wandering out into the room and beginning to defecate on the carpet. Which is, of course, exactly what happens.

“Aww, Archie, no…” Kent whines out, reaching down and lifting the kitten off the ground, holding him carefully so as to stay clean. 

“This is a cat-astrophe,” Justin observes as he reaches under the counter for cleaning supplies, and it’s worth the awful pun to hear Kent’s surprised laugh.

Yeah, Justin could get used to this. Cat poop and all.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: At one point, Justin has a panic attack. His past dissection of a euthanized cat is referenced, though not graphically. If you wish to skip this part, stop reading at "Justin stares down at the kitten in his lap" and resume again at "Kent's arms around him feel like some mix of comfort and taunt."
> 
> me: "how do i characterize justin"  
> me: "what if i gave him all of my fears and anxieties"  
> me: "perfect"
> 
> Original prompt was:  
> Kent/Ransom. Non-hockey player AU; getting together fluff. Kent works at an animal shelter where Ransom often goes to help himself de-stress when he’s overwhelmed by [school, his job, whatever you want him to be doing]. I would love a fluffy story about them getting to know each other, developing feelings for each other, and finally getting together. 
> 
> (I loved your prompt and really hope I did it some kind of justice!)


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